Symmetrical Bodies focuses on the female form as a contemporary object onto which cultural projections of beauty, desire, and perfection transform the body itself into something disquieting and awesome, sublime even. Combining photography and painting, the photographic element preserves the pixelated origin of the mass-produced image while the hand-painted element links to the history of painting and portraiture. When one side of a body is isolated and then mirrored, a purely symmetrical new body emerges which amplifies and reveals extreme idealizations of the female body.
Drawing from late 1960s and 1970s sources—particularly sewing pattern booklets—My Teenage Years reimagines images that once promised accessibility to couture style. These glossy materials celebrated the ready-to-wear boom of mid-century fashion—the era of my own youth—and signaled the origins of today’s fast fashion: a culture built on the fleeting, disposable, and perpetually new. Themes of vanitas and memento mori recur throughout the series, confronting the transience of beauty and life.
Symmetrical Bodies. Small works are acrylic and wax painting with image transfer on paper mounted on wood panel (7" x 5" each).
(left) Solo exhibition at gallery neptune & brown, Washington, DC (2025)
Read Saul Ostrow's Boyden Gallery exhibition catalog essay "From the Domestic to the Glamorized" under Bibliography
(left) Solo exhibition at gallery neptune & brown, Washington, DC (2025)
Read Saul Ostrow's Boyden Gallery exhibition catalog essay "From the Domestic to the Glamorized" under Bibliography
